dispossessed
by ainokitsune
Summary: When the things that make a person whole are stripped away, how much is left over?


_I wrote this a while back and realized it had never been archived here. Whoops!_

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><p>Dispossessed<p>

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><p><em>If there is a limit to all things and a measure<br>and a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,  
>who will tell us to whom in this house<br>we without knowing it have said farewell?  
>-Jorge Luis Borges<em>

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><p>He stands bathed in the light of the intersection, and there are no stars. Maybe there never were any stars. Just the walls of the buildings, flat and huge against the sky.<p>

The light changes, radiance soft on his skin. No cars at this time of night—not much to see at all, just the lights flashing out into the dark, green and yellow and red, flaring over the white pavement lines, the pale sidewalk. Marking out the shape of the woman curled up in the doorway across the street, asleep. Unprotected. He blinks, rapidly, at the sight of her. She's wrapped up in a heavy coat, curled so her face is pressed against her knees, thick hair falling all around.

She might as well be naked. Anything could snatch her up, steal her away. Anything at all.

The light changes again, and this time he skitters across the empty road and up onto the opposite curb. Crosses to stand above the woman, and cocks his head just a little. He can hear the sound of her breath, raspy and rattling. There's no safety here. Not even on the inside. No place to flee.

Without his noticing, his hands have stretched out. Just slightly, and he looks down at them hovering pale in the dark, reaching for her shoulders. As if he could protect her, maybe throw himself bodily across her small frame. Shield her.

He knows that his mouth is open, a little. Behind him the light changes again, throwing yellow radiance over everything, then deepening to red. The woman sleeps right through it. He hesitates another moment, then shrugs out of his jacket and, cautiously, almost jerking back when her shoulders tremble slightly, drapes it over her upper body.

Straightening, Dean casts one animal-quick glance up and down the empty street, then turns swiftly and hurries away into the night.

Sunrise splashes across the windows of buildings, and for a moment lifts the world out of the dust, out of the long night. The shadow-people melt back out of sight, huddle against walls, perch beneath overhangs. Still there, some with signs, some begging silently with nothing but the sheer force of their being. Still there, but hidden, washed in the light and strangely faded, incorporeal. Hands like fine china. Mouths like stars and ashes, riddled with faint and distant pain. The living flood the streets and some offer help, distracted but full of splendor. Where the light falls the shadows fade and skulls show through skin, teeth flashing, eyes huge and black.

Dean stands by the apartment window and watches. He knows that half the people on the street below are angels. He just hasn't figured out which half.

The only thing in the pit worse than the heat, is the damp. The noise comes in somewhere around a close third, the roar of the huge machine drowning out the ambient noise of the kitchen, the general chaos, the thousand ongoing crises. Water runs in rivulets down the smooth white walls and steam scorches his arms, and his fingers have long ago ceased to feel the burn of freshly washed, searingly hot dishes as he hauls out and stacks the racks. Glasses on the floor, silverware on the shelves, dishes on the vast steel counters. Servers flit in and out of his line of sight, and cooks, grabbing at ladles and knives and stacks and stacks of plates. They hiss at the heat and yell to be heard over the noise, but they leave him alone.

As he's crossing the slippery, greasy floor with a fresh green rack biting into the skin of his fingers something close and dark murmurs. Soft and terribly audible under the noise. He flinches, barely, but otherwise doesn't respond. Makes no sign.

_You should walk away._

He positions the heavy plastic with a little more care than is strictly required, and blinks absently at the shiver of water on the bottoms of the upturned glasses.

_Let it go, Dean. _

He turns and grabs the sprayer, yanks it around a bit until it's more or less cooperative, and gives the rack of silverware a good, thorough soak. Bits of egg and bread and tomato and whatever else slide off, pool in the corners, slip out along the smooth shining metal surface. Steam billows out from behind the thick plastic curtain and the roar goes on, endlessly.

_You don't belong here. With them._

There's water on his lashes and he blinks rapidly, letting it spray off his face, dissolve into the air. A sigh collects in his chest and he releases it into space. His mouth stays open, a little, after that, and the voice is gone.

He rubs his ear against his shoulder absently, and pushes the rack into the hollow darkness.

"Hey."

He looks up at the voice. He's been standing for a while, longer than he meant to. The light's shifted, and shifted again, ratcheting through transitions, sliding to the right with each change. There's a man standing near him. Older, vaguely Asian, carrying a sack. The expression on his face is one of impersonal concern.

Dean says, "Oh." He has a sudden sense of _understanding._

"Hey, man, you okay? You want, uh..." the man hesitates. Lost in an unfamiliar situation, surprised at himself for stopping to ask. They're on the corner, cars rushing past, the noise like a wall. Dean opens his mouth.

He says, "They're worlds." Because now it makes sense. Finally, it makes sense.

The other man doesn't say anything.

"Like," Dean looks at him, "Every time it changes the world has changed too. Every time—they're all different worlds. Just kind of…sliding off of us."

The man asks quietly, "You need me to call somebody?"

Dean's mouth works for a moment, and then he shakes his head.

"No," he says, "No. There's nobody."

He passes the woman, again, huddled in her layers, his own coat no doubt deep down, out of sight. Her hair is thick and her gaze filled with mean distrust. Dean finds himself slowing as he passes her, his steps stuttering finally to a halt. She looks up at him, mouth closed, eyes open. Wide, dark, crusted. Dean can see the hunger, and the _hunger_.

All of it, all the way down to the bone.

"You should go to the shelter," he tells her, and she sneers at him. Starts to get up, slowly and with care, legs trembling. Hurls a vicious, spitting curse and he flinches. Can't help it, doesn't mean it, but flinches anyway.

"It's—it's dangerous, out here," he says quietly, drawing a little closer, though he doesn't mean to. They're in the lee of the building, now, noise and people swirling nearby but muted, behind a one-way glass. Dean can see out, but no-one sees in.

"You could get hurt," he whispers.

Her eyes widen and with an attempt at bravado she straightens, suddenly, gathers her coats around her, and her bags, and steps back. Away.

He stands and watches her creep along the wall. Watches until she's out of sight.

He goes back to the apartment. It's a pay-by-the-week sort of place, and familiar. Strange in its silence, though. An old, old building with honest-to-god real radiators that click and rattle and smell of burning hair in October, and fill the room with cradling warmth.

He runs a hand haphazardly over the wall, until he flips the switch almost by accident. The lamp gives off a low, buttery light, and he stands blinking with his hand still resting vaguely on the wall, on the heavy silence deep inside. The walls in this building are thick, and muffle all sound into a faded blur. He never hears his neighbors scream, never hears children cry. He hears the noise of the street, crawling up through the window, all nails and shadows, and the sound of water in the pipes, and sometimes the Other Thing. That's all, though.

He lifts a hand and lightly cups his ear, then drops it. Swallows.

_It's getting late, you know._

He says, "I know."

_A week, maybe two. Then snow._

"Yeah."

_It's cold out there. And now, you don't have a coat. There's nothing left, is there?_

He chafes his hands, lightly. Glances around at the walls. Nothing looks back at him, no evidence of his former life. Nothing hangs in the closet that he hasn't acquired in the last three months. Even his boots are gone; never mind the weapons. He feels lighter, though. Cleaner.

"It's better this way," he says.

_Of course it is._

"I mean I—" he crosses the floor, pulls up the blind, peers outside. "It's better."

Hollow and empty, just under the skin. He lets out a breath and it fogs the window, briefly. He rubs at it with the cuff of his shirt.

"Yeah."

There's a long moment in which he stands, leaning on the wall, watching people scurry around in the street. The temperature's been dropping steadily and cracking the air in the mornings, and every car he sees is coated with a film of frost.

_You'll be done soon._

He shivers a little, at the closeness of the voice. Just by his ear, and soft. Not calming, exactly. But calm. And deep, deep down, humming like needles driven into the base of his skull. Dean's lips part, and he smiles a little. Stares at the light on the surface of the window.

_No one's coming back for you._

Dean likes the meal center, actually. He doesn't have to visit very often; his job pretty much guarantees a meal at least for the days he works, but sometimes there simply isn't enough to cover the cost the rest of the time. So it's nice that the option is there.

There's a man sitting across from him; heavyset, with eyes set strangely far apart. He watches Dean for a bit, glance flicking up, then away, and finally says, "I lost my job, coupla weeks back."

"Things are bad everywhere right now," Dean murmurs, fork halfway to his mouth.

"Damn straight." The man stabs at his spaghetti, says, "Don't really like comin' here, though."

Dean's lips quirk. "Don't like Italian?"

The man gives a dry laugh. "It's not that. S'just, I never had to before. And my father never…we just _didn't_, y'know?"

"I do," Dean says. "Yeah. 'Course I do."

"Lotta weirdos out on the streets these days," he adds conspiratorially.

Dean looks up, surprised into smiling. He knows his teeth are showing, white and clean.

"We have to be grateful for what we have," he says. "Or even that might get taken away."

The man gives him a sideways sort of look, but then nods, and Dean goes back to his meal.

The night catches him by surprise. One minute there's a gleam in the sky, between buildings gone dark and inscrutable, the next a hush descends and there's a pause, just for a moment. The world hesitates, the cars on the road still, and the people fall silent. Just a moment, and then everything starts up again, only now it's dark. As if the day had never been.

He wonders if anybody else even noticed.

He walks past the library and the Chinese restaurant, the grocery and the other Chinese restaurant. The bite in the air is impossible to ignore now, and he's got his hands shoved deep into his pants pockets. Not that it does much good. He's breathing clouds into the air.

On the corner he stops, because there's someone there. Someone, on the other side of the road. All the way on the other side, beyond the crosswalk, hidden from the streetlights, in the shadow of an old red building with huge windows covered in plywood.

There's someone there.

Dean pulls his hands from his pockets. The stoplight bathes the whole world in red and green and stillness and there's a man in the shadows watching him. Standing there, still. Nothing should be so still. Nothing real, nothing alive, nothing human.

Automatically he looks for the woman. His gaze flicks up and down the street but he catches no glimpse of thick hair or layers of coats, no flash of a hungry face or mistrusting eyes.

Maybe she went to the shelter after all.

He searches again for the figure in the dark, but it's like looking for deer in the forest. A strange curve and a mix of light and shadow and he thinks he's looking at the familiar shape, but no. No, it's just an accumulation of objects, junk piled up against the wall.

He takes a deep, trembling breath. Feels it expand against the pain in his chest. Lets it out slow, pale in the light of the city.

"It isn't him" he whispers to himself. "It's not."

He goes to the park in the morning, and watches the frost drop off the branches in the wonderful light of dawn.

He presses his thumb into his breastbone. Waiting to see what his heart will do, and his lungs. The bite of snow hangs in the air, now. Waiting. Bright and precious. He shuts his eyes, makes that motion with his head, like capturing the hollow shape of something in the circumscribed space.

The sound of water is long gone. They've shut off the fountains. Weeks or months ago—Dean doesn't know. The park is full of leaves, and crows, and scattered here and there are people. Like embers drifting in ashes.

And he lifts his eyes and sees the impossible man.

It's not a blow to the chest or head, but he breathes out. There's nothing now but the muted sounds of people and dry leaves skittering over the paved ground. Dean expects small fires to erupt, the crows to take flight, the frost to transform into a rain of stars. He expects a host of incredible things, but he sees the man standing away on the other side of the dry fountain, his feet solid on the earth.

Dean presses a hand to his chest. Looks around at the leaves, the birds, the frost. Turns away and deliberately doesn't look back across the fountain.

He says, "None of these things are real."

He goes to work. The change in the weather means a reduced lunch crowd, at least for a few days. People huddle indoors, eat instant stuff, wait for their bodies to acclimate.

Dean's apron and shirt are soaked, uncomfortable where the damp material chafes against his skin.

"Hey," he murmurs when one of the servers—Cara? Carol?—wanders too close.

"Hm?"

"Have you ever—I mean…" he lifts his eyes and watches as some inexplicable softness creeps over the lines of her face when he looks at her directly. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Carla."

"Carla. Have you ever…" he swallows, "Have you ever…seen something that you were pretty sure—that you were pretty sure wasn't really there?"

She stares at him, and he watches in dismay as the hardness resettles on her face, the shape of her skull becoming more pronounced. Something wary chases across her eyes. Something familiar.

"Oh," he blurts, in understanding. "Oh. Sorry. That was—never mind. Sorry. Sorry."

He turns sharply away from her, back to the dishwasher. Ignores the way he can tell that she's leaving, not so much moving physically away as fading. A fogged glass, clearing.

Walking home later, he sees the first flakes of snow.

Inside the apartment, his name is all over the place.

_Dean._

Layers upon layers. Echoes of whispers. Light refracting light. Piled on top of one another with the noise of dry wings, falling.

_Dean. Dean._

_Dean._

He watches as they flash against his skin.

"There's a man," he whispers.

_No. He's gone. You know he's gone._

"He left." Softly.

_Yes._

"He was always going to leave."

_Of course._

That was how things were. Gone the way the summer was gone. Dried husks and seeds and cataclysm.

He crosses to the window and pushes it open, hinges squeaking. It doesn't go far, just a handful of inches, but the cold blasts in through the space. Grabs at his arms, sinks needle-claws deep into skin and muscle. He covers his face with his hands, and shivers.

_What are you going to do, Dean?_

He drops his hand, looks out the window. Licks his lips which are dry and cold.

"All right," he says finally. "All right."

It jumps in his chest, and shudders there, a brief bleak terror. Beyond that, though, is the cold. Bright and clean. Wide open as the air. He breathes in, then out. Looks out the window. People and cars, pavement and angels, lights and leaves and birds and frost and embers in the ashes.

And none of it's real.

The smile comes back, hangs on his face, echoes the memory of the light on the glass, and in the water.

_Endings make us whole._

Dean.

He lets another breath shiver past his lips. Lets the smile stay. Leans on the windowsill, peers out again at the world, into the deep cold rising up from the well of winter.

Leans back and pulls the window shut.

It waits in storms, in the sounds of battle. Has no name but those which are given. Names of fierce winds, rags and hair tangled in breezes. Beloved of the void. Bone and twine and rust and dry grasses, and the sweet odor of decay. Dry stars and the shadow of the crow. Footsteps on the heath.

Footsteps.

In the air Dean tastes the snow and the late-season fires, the burning of hearths and piles of leaves somewhere in the country. Someplace far away. There is the sound of someone approaching, but distant, with that strange hollow noise of heavy boots on dense, hard-packed earth. Walking up a hill, maybe. The wind shifts, settles, shifts again, and blows melting snowflakes across his skin. Without the radiator the cold creeps out of the walls and settles blue in the corners, puddles around his legs and feet and hands. Seeps into his shoulders where he's propped up by the bed. Soaks into his skull.

He makes a little sound, turns his head slightly. His legs shift, heel of one foot skittering across the floor. The sound comes from the middle of his chest and he inhales shallowly. Rolls his head up so he can see the snow falling.

_Dean._

His lips twitch. His hands are heavy, limp on the floor. He's never going to stand up again.

Needles in his skin, under the surface, driving deep. Pressing through, pinning him to the wall. A thin breath, a laugh without substance, bubbles from his mouth and drips onto his shirt. And the pain that he can't feel. All his bones coming separated. His eyes are open, or his eyes are closed. Burning down, deep down. His knuckles are pierced, and the bones of his wrists. His blood shudders and tries to pull away, drag itself up like a bird from a cage. Too long. It's been inside too long. His fingers twitch, arms roll, but he's pinned. And his feet, and legs. Every part except…

_Dean. Open your eyes._

He rolls his head, scraping his ear on his shoulder. The noise he makes is one of relief.

He opens his eyes.

"Dean!"

His head jerks sharply as the door bangs open and crashes into the wall. Sam fills the doorway but _notSamcan'tbeSam_ and he flings a handful of _something_ into the room and a scream explodes across the surface of Dean's skin and batters against the wall. Dean's body convulses, and he scrabbles at the floor, tries to curl in on himself, dragging the needles with him, but strong sudden hands grab his shoulders and the smell of fennel assaults him.

He fights. It's all he knows, but the room is cold and his bones are all in pieces. He crashes a hand against Sam's (_no_) face and sounds just run out of his mouth and splatter on skin and over the floor and Sam jams a hand behind his elbow and wrenches his arm around and his shoulder _screams_ and he does, too.

"NO!" The word explodes thick and wet from his throat. "You're not here you're _nothere!_"

"Dammit I am, I am, I'm here, Dean stop before you really hurt yourself oh _God…"_

A knee drives into his lower back because he's on his stomach, chest and heart against the floor. His legs spasm with a noise like footsteps on hard-packed earth.

"Hold still, it's in your skin—Dean, you've got to stop, got to let me cut it out—"

A leg slings over his back, across his shoulders and a huge heavy weight sinks down and long legs pin his arms, and fingers like iron grasp his skull and hold him, his face crushed to the floor. He digs a foot against the boards, rocks his body, but nothing happens, no response. Fire splits open the back of his head and he pushes out the noise of his tongue crawling out of his mouth. Blood, blood, runs down the skin under his hair and the hand pressing him against the floor is merciless, cruel, driving his ear into the floorboards, into the deep earth, the dry empty ground.

"Stop," Dean manages, sucks in a gasp, _"Please."_

"Shh," the monster on his shoulders breathes, "Shh."

Strong fingers grind something deep into his skin, into his skull, into the wound. There are words but he can't hear them, doesn't want to hear them, wants to press his hands to his ears and he can't but he screams to drown out the words, and tears squeeze out of his eyes.

"Stopstop_please_stopohGodpleaseyou'renot…can't—oh God _please"_

The window shakes, and smashes open, metal tearing apart. Glass explodes outward and the words don't stop. Tears are running over the bridge of Dean's nose and the walls, the heavy quiet beautiful walls, shudder and buckle and the shriek of wind tearing branches off trees thunders in the room. Dean thrashes, fingers clutching at the floor, and the words don't stop. The hand presses against his skull and he doesn't recognize his own voice, or the stream of words above him, and all he can hear is the wind.

_Dean! _

Dean!

The sound of blood comes pouring out of his mouth.

Then nothing.

He sees the light first. Before he even opens his eyes, he sees it. The fresh breath of dawn, washing everything clean. The clarity of water. The world shifting to the right.

He opens his eyes.

The breath sinks into his chest not through his lungs but out of the air, diffusing through his skin and filling his entire body. He lets it spread out to the tips of his fingers and toes, and then exhales. Blinks up at the white ceiling. There should be cracks there. But it's perfect.

His head turns, almost falling to the side, and he inhales the smell of sheets and sweat, and blood. The back of his head, he realizes, has something plastered to it. And it stings.

He rolls his eyes around in his head, puffs a breath into the air. The walls are white too, thin and luminous, as if resting lightly on the bubble of the world. His moves his fingers, a little bit, experimentally. Rolls his head to the other side and there's a shadow thrown across the wall, grey and pale as a reflection in water. He draws a sharp breath.

"Christ, Dean," Sam whispers, "Jesus _Christ."_

Shadows. That's what it was, months ago. He remembers now. _Shadows on the pavement, a breath in his ear. A voice and long nails on the back of his neck, on his head. Whispering on his skin words he didn't know, couldn't hear. And then it was all_ Sam'sgonehe'sgoneandnotcomingback _and if Sam was gone then what was Dean supposed to do? He couldn't go back, there was no place to go back to._

So he'd walked. Away.

"The middle of the night," Sam says, and pauses to swallow thickly. "You just…You were out, and I went to bed and when I woke up you'd never come back. No one knew where you went. You left—you left all your stuff, man. Left everything."

He can taste glass on his lips, shards and salt and iron. When he opens his mouth he means to say his brother's name. But what comes out is some strange noise, like water sudden on the grass, like the memory of light. His chest, his ribs rattle with it, and his eyes squeeze shut.

He realizes that he's laughing.

Sam whispers, "_Jesus,_ Dean."

Floorboards creak and then the springs of the mattress, as Sam crosses the room and lowers himself gingerly onto the bed. Dean opens his eyes and sees his brother for the first time in four months, sitting awkwardly with his feet on the floor, twisted around with one hand on the bed. Eyes full of grief and joy.

He says, "Hey." And part of Dean thinks _Sam_. But the larger part just wants to laugh again, and so he does. And goes right on laughing, infatuated with the novelty of the sound.

-end-


End file.
